Venture II Treasure box edition

[Raging Prawn]

Anyone know what these go for?

[Mayhem]

You thinking of selling?! ;)

I haven't seen one of them go in a long time... actually I can only think of seeing two public sales in the last 3-4 years. Then again there are only 21... or 22 in existance. Maybe Tim will pop up in here and say which it is.

One of them went for about $225. That's about as much as I can offer in information. No idea if the price has shifted up or down since then.

[Sniderman]

Had to go to AA to get the record straight (this was asked before and I forgot the numbers...):


Folks are e-mailing me about the numbering system of the carts. I can understand the confusion, so let me try to summarize:
* There are 25 carts in the run: 20 numbered and 5 "pre-production" that were given greek letter designations.
* First there were the first 4 "pre-production" carts - made to make sure I knew how to do this (stripping the ROMs, soldering, labelling, chest assembly, etc.) Those first four were given the greek letters "alpha, beta, gamma, and delta" and were given away to folks who helped me out. (I kept "alpha" which is now for auction.)
* There were 20 carts made and assembled that were sold to private parties at CGE 2001. The last one - #20 - was actually auctioned off at the CGE 2001 auction. That was the first hint of how sought-after these were.
* A month later, 9/11 hit. The Als at AtariAge asked me for a donation for their charity auction, so I made one more specifically for this. This cart was designated "Sigma" and is identical in every way to the carts released 30 days earlier. This cart brought $400 for the event, of which I'm pretty proud.

So, those are the "25." Some folks consider Sigma as an addition to the run, but I consider it just as viable as the other 24 - more so because it was made for a very specific reason.

There was one final cart made for CGE last year - numbered "Omega" (As in "the last one of these I'll ever mess with). "Omega" is NOT considered "one of the initial 24/25" and is its own specially-created entity. It *is* a "Treasure Chest edition," but the cart label clearly says it was released at CGE 2002 and the instructions have a color cover and are signed. So it doesn't count (by my reckonning). It was made just for someone who may have wanted the boxed edition, but is seperate from the inital 24/25.

So, there you have it. Five greek-lettered versions (which includes the 9/11 cart) and 20 numbered carts. "Omega" is a CGE 2002 release and is not part of original run.

So the auctioned cart was $200+ and the 9/11 auctioned cart was $400+. I have seen these sold only two other times and I believe they were $200+ each time. It befuddles me because - technically - it is "only a graphics hack." But I believe the packaging and the "lore" behind its release (as well as the low production run) makes it pretty sought after.

[Mayhem]

Cheers for the clarification, I was forgetting the pre-release greek letter versions; was thinking the 20 normal ones and the one from CGE 2002 initially.

As for public sales I was talking secondary sales say on eBay (ie. not the two sold at CGE and the one you sent to AA for example). Which you seem to agree with me Tim, there have been only two. Could this be number three? ;)

[Sniderman]

Well, I did a search on AA for "Venture II treasure chest" and got a handful of hits discussing eBay auctions for 'em. Looks like there were two or three ebay'ed off by original buyers. And it appears that the auctions all ended in the $200-$250 range.